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What Questions Should I Be Asking?

I just read a discussion that was originally posted by Steve Ollington on May 22, 2011 where he states that many people are asking the wrong types of questions on this forum. He said that he wonders if he will see a shift from people asking questions on "how to rank" to questions dealing with "how to work out the best KPIs" (Key Performance Indicators - yes I had to google it).

I was once told we learn more by asking questions about a topic than by just listening. I've also been told that sometimes the right question to ask is, "What questions should I be asking?" So here is my question, what types of questions should I be asking to be better at SEO? Perhaps these are some of them:

Is it possible to be good at SEO when it is not a full-time job? It is very tempting to look for easy answers when you only have limited time.

What are considered KPI's? Are they different for every industry?

How do you know what is junk information vs what is truly good SEO advice? Is it just simply trial and error? It seems to me that if people find truly good SEO information, they aren't going to be sharing it so easily. It's the whole, "You get what you pay for".

Maybe some of you can tell me more of the questions I should be asking.

Hi Kade - welcome to the Moz Q+A! Thrilled to have you here. I'll do my best on your three queries.

#1 - It's definitely possible, and often times, in early stages of a business, you've got to find proficiency in lots of areas, figure out what's critical/core to your business and then scale those individual functions to experts. As an example, at Moz, I started getting "good" at SEO when web design and usability consulting was my day job. As I got curious and better at it, that became more of my role until I couldn't scale anymore and we hired consultants to help. Even as recently as this year, we brought in Tom Critchlow from Distilled to work in-house at Moz for 3 months, helping our marketing team establish great strategy around lots of inbound initiatives (as I had other obligations as CEO).

#2 - There are usually some KPIs that are cross-industry and company and others that are very specific. For example, nearly everyone cares about visits and conversions (whatever a "conversion" might mean). But some companies care much more about pages per visit (particularly those that are ad-revenue based) or average membership lifetime (for those who have subscription models). Figuring out the KPIs for your organization is the first step to good analytics.

#3 - Weirdly, I've found that in the SEO field, 95%+ of the great, white hat information is shared publicly. It's often accompanied by other signals of trust - good-looking, professional websites, authored by well known and referenced industry authorities who speak at conferences and have impressive client lists. The ones you need to watch out for come from the two extremes of the spectrum - first, the mainstream media which, to my knowledge, has never done and effective job covering how SEO works or the tactics one should follow. The second are the low-quality "craphat SEOs" who play on ignorance and make "too-good-to-be-true" offers.

How do you know what is junk information vs what is truly good SEO advice? Is it just simply trial and error? It seems to me that if people find truly good SEO information, they aren't going to be sharing it so easily.

First, I think that most of the content posted on SEO forums is either incorrect or dangerous (ducks!)... so rather than deciding WHAT to listen to I decide WHO to listen to.

At the top of my list of WHO to listen to would be Bill Slawski (seobythesea), Rand Fishkin (seomoz founder), DazzlinDonna (dazzlindonna), Alan Bleiweiss (seomoz member), iamlost (cre8asiteforums). Listen to people who you think are successful and who you have followed for a while.

Free information can be really really good (if you are careful)... but the most dangerous information is cheap information.

Yeah, I actually think that cheap/paid advice can be just as dangerous and absolutely agree that the "who" can be more important than the "where". The other thing I'd add is that so much advice isn't good or bad so much as contextual. When someone asks how they should handle duplicate content or a major site architecture issue, it's tough to give a quick answer. Even when I can and that answer is right for them, that doesn't mean it's right for everybody. Eventually, you really have to understand some of the fundamental principles behind the answers people give.

Let's step back from SEO. Look at generic, internet health advice. Should you drink milk, for example? If you're malnourished, yes, absolutely. If you need more Vitamin D, sure. If you're lactose intolerant, probably not. If you're allergic, you could die. No matter how smart anyone is, there's no one-sized-fits-all answer to that question, IMO. That's true for a lot of complex SEO issues.

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